


Protose and Other Problems

by A_Virtuous_Pyromaniac



Category: Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress Classic
Genre: Gen, Young Team Fortress Classic, only ship here is friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 20:58:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14529045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Virtuous_Pyromaniac/pseuds/A_Virtuous_Pyromaniac
Summary: Classic Pyro makes vegetarian food. Cheavy is not happy about it. Shenanigans ensue.Set in 1935. A fluffy story about the Classics in their prime.





	Protose and Other Problems

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on a conversation between me an one of my buddies in the TFC rping group on tumblr. It was so ridiculous that I had to immortalize it in prose form.  
> Of the characters here, I can only take credit for Bea. Ethan and Roy belong to Danny, Rory and Roderick belong to Ozzie, and Greg belongs to Woody. Many thanks to my friends for allowing me to use their characters. 
> 
> As a Cheat Sheet: The RP-verse Classic Mercs (and their origins, and their tumblrs)
> 
> Scout: Rory Cassidy. From Ireland. @classical-crowbar 
> 
> Pyro: Bea Rasmussen. From Chicago. @inappropriate-drill-usage 
> 
> Heavy: Ethan Owens. From somewhere in the Upper Midwest of the United States. @classic-gorilla 
> 
> Engineer: Roy Conagher. From Texas. @classic-engineering
> 
> Demoman: Greg O’Brien. From Massachusetts @bombsails 
> 
> Medic: Roderick Felten. From England. @find-a-health-kit

July 21, 1935  
Sunday 

Deciding on a 2:00-4:00 workout time had taken a ridiculous amount of negotiation and compromise. Left to her own devices, Bea usually woke around noon and went to sleep around three in the morning. 

Ethan balked at this. How could someone just sleep half the daylight away? He considered himself having slept in if he wasn’t done with his morning run by the time the sun rose. Ten at night was time for a nice half-hour of reading before bed, not time to hit the gym because it was “uncrowded” and “quiet.” 

The time difference had almost driven them to find other weightlifting partners. But the team’s scout treated the dumbbells as carelessly as if they’d been toys, and soldier was too scatter-brained to be a reliable spotter. And the rest of the team only considered strength training to be a dull necessity for the mercenary job. Despite Ethan’s frequent admonitions of the joy of a good deadlift, they seemed unable to appreciate weightlifting as sport. 

All grumbling aside, Bea was somewhat proud of the fact that she’d persuaded Ethan to accept a time that didn’t require her to alter her sleep schedule. And besides, early-morning hardnose or not, Ethan was probably the best lifting buddy she’d ever had. He always remembered to wipe down the equipment, didn’t wear the same stinking A-shirt for three weeks in a row, and he never tried to count twenty minutes of lifting and forty minutes of chatter as an hour’s workout. And his strength gave her something to aspire to, even if she knew she’d never match him. 

It was 4:01 by now, but it wouldn’t kill them to run late for the sake a few more bench presses. Ethan was on the bench, sweating so profusely that it was dripping onto the mats. Bea peered down at him, all while keeping her grip on the barbell as light as possible. 

“Really?” It was only too easy to be scornful when she was looking down at him. “Look at all that sweat. Can’t believe you need effort to lift, what, 260?”

Whoever said that spotting was the dull part of weightlifting had no idea what they were talking about. 

“Face it,” said Bea with a smile. “You’re getting old. Must have left your best in the trenches. You’re finished. It’s all downhill from here.”

With that, Ethan finished his tenth press and racked the barbell. For a moment, he just lay there, panting ever so slightly. He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. 

“Fuck you,” he finally said. 

Fuck you must have been Ethan’s favorite phrase. It was irritation and appreciation all rolled up in one. So Bea just grinned as Ethan sat up, pulled off his A-shirt and mopped his face. The little black tramp stamp was just visible over the top of his boxers. "Property of the U.S. Government," the tattoo read. Bea looked from the tattoo to Ethan’s sweat-plastered armpit hair and thought about how nice it would be to rip her own shirt off. Sweet relief on a scorching July day. 

Ethan sighed, not even bothering to conceal the sound. “I’m fucking starving. You know who’s making dinner?”  
Bea blinked. “Oh. I am.” 

Her words made Ethan’s face change. The expression wasn’t quite displeasure. Maybe it was more like caution; caution in anticipation of displeasure. “What’re you making?”

Bea frowned. No point in lying. He’d find out soon enough. “Protose loaf. New recipe.” She’d found it in Substitutes for Flesh Foods, a vegetarian cookbook she’d found at Teufort’s pawn shop. 

Ethan made a sound that was half a grunt, half a groan. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope,” Bea fiddled with the hem of her shirt.

“Firefly.” Ethan’s voice was almost pleading now. “You gotta understand. We just worked out. I need a good meal. A real meal. One with meat.” 

“I work out just as much as you do.” Enough with the heat. Bea yanked her shirt over her head, revealing her lace-up sports bra.  
“Yeah, but you’re crazy.” The words were muttered, half-concealed by the rustle of fabric. 

“Excuse me?” Bea glared upwards at Ethan, half-hoping she’d misheard him. 

“You’re crazy.” This time, it was loud and clear. “Nobody else wants to eat your…stuff. Why doncha think about the team?” 

The team? The team got meat nearly every night. While they ate their ham-and-peas aspic or SPAM with onions, Bea was always digging in the icebox, looking for peanut butter or boiled eggs. She was so sick of nut butter and eggs she could have screamed, and now Ethan was bitching over the prospect of one night without his precious animal flesh? 

“You know what? Suck it up.” Bea tossed her shirt over her shoulder. “If you don’t like what I feed you, I can’t force you to eat it.”  
“Damn right you can’t.” And with that, Ethan headed off towards the locker rooms.  
* * *  
Alone in the locker room, Bea had a good mind to punch something. Unfortunately, she’d smashed the mirror long ago, and nothing else was made of glass. She settled for ripping the shower curtain open with unusual violence. 

Fucking Ethan. The great conformist. Give him anything outside his expectations of the ordinary, and he’d throw up a mental wall that took forever to disassemble. Sure, the Boss had eventually come around to accepting Bea’s sex, but even after all these years, he’d never grown any more comfortable with the idea that she didn’t eat meat. 

Maybe he didn’t quite believe Bea’s stories. Maybe he’d noticed Bea’s interest in the macabre, and assumed she was making things up. The meatpacking stories were certainly bizarre enough. Glycerin in the sausage; rats running up and down pieces of meat. Health inspectors willing to take bribes. Tubercular hogs and cattle so weak from disease they had to be carried in from the yards. Red-hot pokers inserted into hams, all in an attempt to conceal the rancid parts. Povl Rasmussen, blood on his cuticles, collapsed on his bed in the tenement, telling his two little daughters all about the things that happened in Chicago’s slaughterhouses. 

How could Ethan not understand that Bea was disgusted? 

Maybe it had less to do with the stories and more to do with torture. If Bea could burn a prisoner with a clothes iron and beat him bloody, how could an innocuous block of SPAM frighten her? When Bea said that her victim’s blood and puss and urine didn’t end up in her mouth, nobody listened. 

Whatever. Bea turned her face towards the wonderful, cool stream of water and took a deep breath. Forget Ethan. If she took his whining to heart, that would only give him satisfaction. Since when had she cared what other people thought of her, anyway?  
* * *  
By the time Bea had finished her shower, towel-dried her hair, and changed into a calico house-dress, she was considerably less angry. Cheerful, almost. After all, who wouldn’t be cheerful at the prospect of a good dinner? The new protose loaf recipe and the familiar one for macaroni cutlets. Just the right combination and adventurous and familiar. To make things even better, Rory stopped by for a chat. The scout sat on the counter, legs crossed daintily at the knee, his sweet Irish voice filling the kitchen. 

“And I had never told any of my friends that Mam had me taking ballet lessons. And there Dom was, all expecting me to be at his party, and what was I supposed to say, like?”

Thank god for Rory. Always there for company and a laugh when she needed them. He could keep her calm, level her temper, take her mind off things. 

“I’m not about to tell him I’m in The Nutcracker. One word that I’m supposed to run out from under the skirt of Mama Ginger, and I’d never hear the end of it. So I make up this story that I’m supposed help shear the sheep. In December. Couldn’t think of anything better. But Dom’s family didn’t have any sheep, so maybe he believed me, and-” 

The kitchen door slammed open, cutting Rory off. Ethan stomped in with all the grace of a hippopotamus and made a show of rummaging through the icebox. Rory raised an eyebrow. Bea ignored them both and started opening a can of protose. Setting the can opener aside, she gave the can a little shake and the contents slipped out in a whole, neat cylinder. It held the imprints from the ridges in the can. 

“That looks like dog food.” Ethan shut the icebox door. 

“Dog food would have meat in it,” said Bea.

“No, you’re right.” Ethan straightened up, and Bea saw that he had a wax-paper package of hamburger in his hand. “I wouldn’t even give that to a dog.” 

Rory let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a cough. Bea just rolled her eyes, and tossed the onions into a pan. The next thing she knew, Ethan had leaned over her and slapped his own pan on the stove’s other burner. 

“What’re you – I need that!” Bea pointed at the burner. 

“I’m making burgers.”

“Not with that burner, you’re not. I need it.”

“Fuck. Relax, why don’t you? It’ll be quick.” 

Bea entertained this for maybe half a second before grabbing a whisk and branding it at Ethan like a weapon. “Move the damn pan. I’m cooking. Stove’s mine.” 

Ethan looked from Bea to the pot. Sure, he could have picked Bea up with one arm and tossed her out of the room, but Bea would certainly exact a painful and petty revenge. He might get his burgers, but he’d probably find poison ivy smeared on his sheets for his trouble. 

“Try me.” Bea gave the whisk a most threatening little shake. 

In the corner of Bea’s eye, Rory was visibly squirming. Something about his face made Bea wondering if he was going to cut and run. 

Five seconds passed. 

“Fine.” Ethan threw the pan back on the shelf and stomped out. 

Well. That had gone a bit easier than Bea had expected. She allowed herself a lopsided grin before returning to her cooking, and Rory returned to his story. Within the hour, the olive sauce had been poured over the protose loaf, the macaroni cutlets had been breaded and fried, and Bea had gotten all the food to the table. 

Rory and their solider were not inclined to ask questions about their food before they inhaled it. Roy was too polite to complain, and the demoman was probably to scared of Bea to criticize anything. Sure, the spy might have looked at the food with disdain, but he looked at everything with disdain. If someone other than Ethan was likely to make a fuss, it was Roderick, their medic. But the doctor was gone, probably patching up some important henchman for the Administrator. 

When Ethan arrived, he only put macaroni cutlets on his plate. Bea assumed he was just going to eat those until he slammed the whole package of raw hamburger onto the table. Red liquid leaked from the package’s seams. 

A little bit of surprised laughter sputtered out of Bea. Nobody noticed, because Ethan unwrapped the hamburger and stabbed his fork into it. He stuffed the fork into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. All this while glaring into Bea’s eyes so intently that she was surprised she didn’t spontaneously combust. 

Bea couldn’t keep the disgust off her face. If a whole piece of cooked flesh could give a man some slaughterhouse disease, then this was just suicidally reckless. Ethan might as well go into the polio ward and snuggle up against the nearest patient. 

“What?” Ethan swallowed a second forkful of hamburger. “You got a problem with something?”

Bea’s first instinct was to grab her plate and leave the table. She couldn’t watch this. It was like watching someone projectile-vomiting and calling it dinner entertainment. But Ethan would be so smug if he knew he’d prevented her from enjoying her own cooking. So Bea locked eyes with Ethan and put a bite of protose loaf in her mouth. 

Bea swallowed. “You’re not supposed to eat raw meat.”

“Oh?” Ethan’s eyebrows shot up. “Says who? Cavemen ate raw meat.” 

By now, Bea was gripping her fork so forcefully that her hand was starting to hurt. “There’s probably cow shit in that. I bet it makes you sick.” 

Ethan’s grin was positively venomous. Bea could see bits of meat caught between his teeth. “Nah, you’re just scared of meat, sweetheart. If cavemen can do it, I can too.” 

Bea had nothing to say to that, so they went back to glaring. Chew, swallow, glare. Ethan’s blue eyes drilling a hole into Bea’s hazel ones. Had it ever taken so long to consume two slices of entre and three macaroni cutlets? Bea had never been so glad to be done with a meal.  
* * *  
Seeing Bea so visibly disgusted made a bubble of satisfaction built up in Ethan’s stomach. Good. So they were both revolted by this dinner. At the very least, it made things fair. 

Ethan was even more satisfied when Bea retreated to her room after doing the dishes. She almost never did that. Normally, she stayed up in the common room with Rory, playing games and reading passages from dime-store romance novels aloud to each other. They’d throw jazz records on the phonograph and dance those ridiculous leg-kicking modern dances. Or Rory would bang out some chords on the piano, and Bea would sing along with the sweetness of a tortured cat. If the whole base couldn’t hear their music, it could certainly hear their giggling. 

But Bea was gone, and Rory was left hanging, like an abandoned puppy. He sat in the common room and idly kicked his feet for a few minutes, before he too, disappeared. This allowed Ethan to sit in the common room, reading "The Complete History of the Glorious Revolution" without the music, matches, and overwhelming chatter. He smiled at a picture of William of Orange. If eating raw meat ensured that evenings would be this peaceful, he’d have to do it more often.

Ethan was still reading when Roderick returned to the base at nine-thirty. He had his surgical bag in hand and dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked about the common room with a frown. “Where’re the kids?” 

Bea and Rory were the only ones on the team who had been born after 1900. 

“Bea’s throwing a fit.” Ethan turned a page. “Don’t know about Rory.” 

“Why…you know, never mind. I don’t want to know.” Roderick headed for the kitchen. “Any dinner left?” 

“Just Bea’s muck, but it’s there it you want it.” Ethan could hear the icebox opening and closing, and the sound of rattling dishes. Roderick must have been hungry enough for muck.  
***  
Ethan was asleep by ten-thirty and awake and in the gym by six-thirty the next morning. A good workout, a hearty breakfast, and he was ready for a solid day of fighting. He was usually the first to arrive in the spawn room, followed immediately by Roy. The rest of the team trickled in afterwards. Ethan had told them a thousand times that on time means ten minutes early, but they never seemed to listen. 

“Mission begins in five minutes.”

All the men were here now, checking and re-checking their weapons, or adjusting caps and visors. Bea was nowhere. Ethan swore under his breath. It wouldn’t surprise him one bit if Bea had been up until the wee hours of the morning, playing with her Zippo and sulking. Wallowing in her own anger just because he’d shown her up and gotten his meat. Maybe Bea was still sleeping, even now. If so, he’d dock her pay. A professional merc had no business missing the start of battle. 

“Mission begins in two minutes.” 

Bea came crashing through the door. Her suit wasn’t fully zipped, her asbestos balaclava was out of place, and her respirator clearly wasn’t sealed. Strands of red hair leaked everywhere. She grabbed Roy by the shoulder and started frantically gesturing for him to help her into her flamethrower. 

Roderick made a sound. The edges were muffled by his respirator, but everyone could hear the irritation in it. He went over to Bea, pulled off her respirator, swept her hair back, and re-sealed it properly. Ethan caught a glimpse of Bea’s face, which was gray from lack of sleep. Her eyes were bloodshot, almost swollen-looking. Oh, yes. She’d been up late, and probably smoking too much of her beloved marijuana, to boot. The warm buzz of a high at night made for headaches and dehydration the next day.  
“Rough night?” Ethan was glad he didn’t have to wear a mask. This way, his voice was loud and clear and his grin was clearly visible. 

“Mmmmpphhh-mmmmmpppphhh.” Bea held up her middle finger. 

Roderick made another irritated noise. 

“Get fighting!” 

And then there was no more time for irritation. The team was already charging out the door.  
***  
Bea might have been miserable with her lingering high, but Ethan quickly realized his day was only going to be slightly less miserable. Though it was morning, no trace of the night’s coolness lingered in the air. The sun beat down out of the yellowy-white sky, and it only took ten minutes for Ethan to sweat through his bandana. This would be one of the days when Roy’s dispensers held bottles of salt water, to make up for what the team lost in sweat. 

And to make things worse, the REDs had clearly thought of a new strategy. They weren’t exactly well coordinated (what team of mercs ever was?) but their scout got his hands on the intelligence within the first hour. Sure, he was blown to bits before he could return the briefcase to the RED base, but it rattled the BLUs. 

“That was luck!” Ethan screamed as his men, as he paced around the blood splatter and dismembered limbs. “Fucking sons-of-bitches got lucky! They won’t get lucky again!” He didn’t quite believe his own words, but he had to keep morale up. Morale was like dominoes. Let the fall began, and there would be nothing left of his men. They’d be like toppled blocks, devoid of any usable energy. 

Whatever the REDs had, be it luck or a new strategy, they were putting the BLUs on the defensive. Ethan found himself on the battlements, frantically trying to mow down oncoming REDs before he ran out of ammo or health. He had pull Rory back from the offense and ordered him to run ammo from Roy’s dispenser in the intelligence room to the men on the front lines. Meanwhile, Roderick was gasping and sweating, so preoccupied with healing that he couldn’t make use of his super nailgun. 

It wasn’t until ten-thirty that Ethan had time to catch his breath and think a complete thought. Suddenly, his insides lurched. For a moment, he thought nothing of it. He was an adult; he could wait until their lunch break to use the WC. But then they lurched again, and he realized that wasn’t about to happen. He had no choice but to abandon he place. If he’d had a little more dignity, he wouldn’t have run towards the mens’ room, but he did. And not a moment too soon. 

“Fuck.” Of all the times to have diarrhea, why now? Why on a day when the BLUs needed every man at the top of his game? No, no. Sitting here fuming about it wasn’t going to help anything. Ethan paused. Maybe one bout of diarrhea wasn’t all that bad. He’d lost a lot of water; the offending bug was probably flushed out of his system. Yes. It was probably gone. On a day like today, it had to be gone. The alternative was unacceptable. Ethan pulled up his pants and reached for his assault canon. 

Granted, Ethan had never believed too strongly in the power of positive thinking, and that was just as well, because it soon became apparent that his little pep talk in the WC wasn’t doing him a lick of good. Waves of nausea rolled over him as soon as he returned to the battlements. A solider and a demoman came charging up the stairs, and Ethan’s head swam and lights flashed behind his eyes even as he fired up his gun. 

Then everything went black. 

He woke up in Respawn, and immediately lunged for the vomit bucket. Nothing unusual about that. There was something unusual about the force with which he emptied his stomach. And even once everything was gone, he kept retching until his eyes began to water. 

Ethan pulled up his prescription goggles and wiped at his eyes with one enormous hand. The sweat and dirt made them sting. He licked his lips; the taste in his mouth was bile. He’d lost more than just his breakfast. Was his system trying to purge his intestines in reverse? Respawn sickness usually wasn’t this severe. 

Oh, fuck. Who was he kidding? He probably had food poisoning. Ethan might have joked about cavemen eating raw meat, but he wasn’t stupid. Of course raw meat could make a man sick, but he’d always considered that to be a very slim possibility. After all, he’d eaten plenty of rare steaks without issue. 

Bea was never going to let him hear the end of this. 

“Alert! The enemy has taken our intelligence!”

“Fuck!” Ethan stood so suddenly that all the blood rushed away from his head. Sick or not, gloating pyro or not, he was just going to have to suck it up. The BLUs had a match to win.  
* * *  
As it turned out, the RED spy had made it into the intelligence room while disguised as Rory. He’d stabbed Roy, gassed Bea with a hallucination grenade, and ripped Roderick’s super nailgun off his pack before driving a half-dozen nails into the medic’s skull. The RED would have made it back his base had he not stumbled across a disoriented Greg, who had a tourniquet around the stump of his left arm. Maybe the spy meant to indulge in a little taunting; Greg couldn’t remember the details. But at any rate, it seemed he had recognized the spy, because he’d pulled the five-second pin on his detpack. The blast sent them both through Respawn, but it saved the match. 

By lunchtime, all the dominoes of morale had fallen. Barely a word was said over their sandwiches and pie. Roy moved about silently, fixing armor. Roderick moved about too, grumbling and administering injections of medi-serum. The only other sound was the hum of the dispenser. The team had been drinking bottles of salt water faster than it could generate them. The dispenser’s motors buzzed, its lights flashed, its cooling fans whirred, and it spat out a single bottle of water, which was immediately snatched by Rory and chugged in three seconds. 

Ethan was thirsty too, so thirsty his tongue was starting to stick to the roof of his mouth. Still, that thirst didn’t give him the energy to compete with Rory for the water. All he could do was sit with his pounding head between his knees and breathe slowly. His stomach was still churning, perhaps more vigorously than before. What could it possibly want now? Hadn’t it already caused him enough trouble? 

Then Roderick’s hands were on Ethan’s tricep. “Little pinch. One, two, three.” Ethan barely felt the needle because he was so used to it. He wasn’t used to Roderick sheathing the needle* and then taking Ethan’s hands in his. 

“Your fingers are quite swollen.” Devoid of respirator, Roderick’s voice was firm and clear. “Have you been drinking?”

“Plenty of water, Doc.” Ethan pulled up his head and saw that Roderick’s frown was deeper than usual. 

“You don’t look well. You’re pale.”

“Might be feeling a bit under the weather.” Roderick pressed his fingers to Ethan’s forehead, but it was probably difficult to feel a fever when they were all so hot. “Might be coming down with something.” 

Ethan did his best to say it softly, but it didn’t matter. There was a snigger from a few feet away. 

“I bet he’s sick.” Bea wore just the kind of grin Ethan hated, but the rest of her was a mess. Her face was more off-kilter than usual; her eye wasn’t quite focused. The hallucination gas was still wearing off. 

“Probably a cold or something.” Ethan tried not to sound desperate. “Maybe the flu,” he conceded when Roderick raised an eyebrow. 

“Told you so, Boss. Say that I told you so.” Bea had sauntered over to where Ethan was sitting and leered down at him. She leered in his general direction, anyway. She was probably seeing three of him, if her unsteady walk was anything to go by. 

“Come on. I was right. Say it loud and clear. Gotta make sure everyone can hear you.” 

“Firebug,” Roy took Bea’s shoulder. “Is it really the right time for this?”

“Oh, it’s always the right time for this!” She swatted at his hand and missed it. 

“Firebug, no.”

“What’s she talking about?” said Roderick.

“All that raw burger he ate,” said Bea. 

“Raw burger?” 

“It’s the flu,” Ethan growled. 

“The flu?” Bea snorted. “It’s fucking July. Flu season is winter.”

Enough. Ethan tried to stand up. He’d grab Bea and stuff her respirator back on her face. Cork in a bottle. Anything to get her to shut up. He never quite made it to his feet, though. As soon as he moved, blobs of light swam before his eyes and the nausea boiled out of his stomach and into his throat. 

Ethan dropped back to the ground, then leaned over and threw up on Bea’s boots.  
* * *  
Returning to the afternoon’s battle must have been out of the question after that. At any rate, the next thing Ethan knew, it was evening and he was in the infirmary. There was an IV in his arm, and a wet rag on his forehead. Hospital gown and a bedpan, with a bucket beside the bed. Everything hurt and everything was blurry. Someone had removed his glasses. 

The only sounds were soft footsteps and the trickle of water. Probably Roderick, watering and pruning his many potted plants. Ethan squinted, but he couldn’t see anything. 

“Doc?” 

The footsteps came close and a hand put his glasses on his face. Ethan almost regretted the ability to see things clearly. Roderick did not look happy. 

“We lost, didn’t we?”

“We lost while Greg and I were carrying you here.” Pause. “Bloody hell, Ethan. Raw hamburger. What were you thinking?”  
Ethan just groaned and closed his eyes. “It is food poisoning, then?” he said after a moment. 

“Of course it’s food poisoning!” Roderick’s hands flailed in every direction. 

“Hoped it was the flu.” 

“I’ll write down a diagnosis of influenza if it gets you and Bea to shut up! I swear to god, I go away for two days, and everything’s gone all to pot. Blutarch didn’t hire mercs; he hired overgrown children.”

The words stung, but Ethan couldn’t disagree. How to explain that all of this had begun as some gym-time trash-talk that had spun out of control? Roderick would never understand. So he kept silent and allowed Roderick to change the IV and feed him a bit of supper. Rice and applesauce. Ethan’s stomach churned, but he managed to keep it down. 

It was dark by now, the temperature plummeting into an icy desert night. The only light came from Roderick’s desk lamp. Ethan watched as the doctor’s hand moved from paper to inkwell and back again. Ethan’s collapse on the battlefield probably warranted an accident report. What was Roderick saying? Patient succumbed to food poisoning after divvy attempt to one-up his teammate. The Administrator’s paper-pushers would probably pass it among themselves, laughing. 

Someone knocked on the door, probably Greg or Roy. If someone had to take the night shift, they usually volunteered. 

“Hey, Doc. Roy sent me.” Bea had a book in one hand and her zippo in the other. 

“What does he want?”

“He wants me to read aloud to Boss.” 

Ethan didn’t need to be able to see Roderick’s face to know that doctor was surprised. “What did…did he get Spy to threaten you or something?”

“None of your business.” Bea crossed her arms. “Can I see him or not? ‘Cause if you’re not gonna let me, I need you to tell Roy that. He won’t believe…”

“You can see him. Wait, though.” Roderick left Bea at the threshold and started rummaging through his cabinets, retrieving a cotton surgical mask. “Put this on. We can’t have you getting sick, too.”

“Wait.” Bea’s mouth dropped open. “He actually has the flu? But the season…”

“Flu can strike out of season.”

“Really?”

“Don’t really me. I’m a doctor. Why did I spent all those years at university if I wasn’t going to learn when the flu could hit?” 

Bea’s eyes flicked to the floor. Was she embarrassed? But the gesture lasted only a fraction of a second, and then she was back to peering up at Roderick. “I was so certain it was food poisoning.” 

“Yes. I saw. Everyone saw your being certain. Lovely show, really.” 

“Are you trying to shame me?”

“Trying my hardest.” Roderick put the mask over Bea’s mouth and tied the straps. “Be a doll and be nice to him, won’t you? It won’t cost you anything.”  
***  
Bea sat on the edge of Ethan’s bed. Maybe Roderick had succeeded in beating some shame into her, because her expression had softened. “Hey, boss.”

Ethan sighed. “So Roy told you to come?” 

“Well, yeah. You think I hang out here for shits and giggles?” She turned on the lamp on the bedside table and opened "The Complete History of the Glorious Revolution" to the place that Ethan had bookmarked. “The Glorious Revolution, huh? That’s the one with Robespierre and the guillotine-happy Frenchy frogs**, right?” 

Ethan just blinked, not sure whether he should laugh or roll his eyes. 

“I mean, most of this old European history stuff is boring, but I see why you’d wanna read about guillotines. ‘Cause it’s glorious.”

“Yes, Bea. Absolutely glorious.” Ethan traced his fingers over a seam in the bedsheets and tried not too smile so brightly as to give himself away. “But they don’t start the head-chopping for another hundred pages. You’d better start reading if you want to get there.” 

That seemed to spur her on, so she opened the book. William of Orange, the Dutch and the English. Ethan closed his eyes and wondered if Bea would figure him out before he nodded off. 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> *It’s 1935. You can bet Roderick’s been using that needle on the whole team. He probably sharpens it once a week or so. 
> 
> **For all those not-history-buffs out there, Bea is totally wrong about this. The Glorious Revolution took place in England in 1688 and did not involve any guillotines


End file.
